Bye Bye Canadian Penny?

DO you guys think we NEED the penny still?

Source: CBC.CA

Save the penny or leave the penny?

Comments (137)

Tuesday, August 7, 2007 | 10:27 AM ET


The Canadian penny? Could you blame a bus driver for refusing to allow you to put a couple hundred of them into the fare box?
A growing number of economists and bankers are urging the Canadian government to give up the penny, as the U.K. gave up the farthing and, later, the halfpenny.
Both Australia and New Zealand removed their one- and two-cent coins in the early 1990s. New Zealand went one step further in 2006 and demonetized the five-cent piece.
In Canada, the Currency Act says, "A payment in coins … is a legal tender for no more than … twenty-five cents if the denomination is one cent." No one is legally obligated to accept more than 25 pennies at a time.
The Royal Canadian Mint produces about 816 million pennies per year. It's estimated that there are 20 billion Canadian pennies — 600 for every one of us — in pockets, jars, fountains and piggy banks in 2007.
Full Story
Is it time to get rid of the penny?
Update: The last pennies to be made of mostly copper were minted in 1996. Currently, pennies are made of copper-plated stainless steel and nickel.

If we do get rid of the pennies, it would be nice to see the govenment get back as many pennies as possible so a genius artist such as Brian Jungen could make a grand work of art with them.

I once saw this old station wagon covered completely in pennies..jane and wislon mall parking lot...As the owner was getting in i asked him roughly how many was on the thing.....he screamed at me some inanities, barking mad.

i just went "Oh k"..walked on and this lady came up to me and said , "Don't feel bad he's like that to everyone"......

Maybe cars covered in pennies is a sign the guy should not have a liscence

Britain has had some strange coins over the years.

The SHILLING was used until our currency was decimalised in 1971. Before 1971, Britain had probably the world's only currency system that wasn't decimalised - i.e. it didn't have a system that was simply 100 of something to 1 something, such as nowadays it has 100 pence (p) to the pound (£). This is how complicated our currency system was -

There were 20 shillings in 1 pound. The symbol for the shilling was /- or s.

There were 12 pennies to the shilling. The symbol for the penny was d.

There were 240 pennies to the pound. The symbol for the pound was £ or l.

The shilling is what today we would term as 5p (as twenty of them went into the £), but it won't actually be worth that much today due to inflation. But at the time it WASN'T 5p, it was 12p. People often called the shilling the "bob" and lots of older people in Britain today still call it the bob. Two bob is 10p.

To anyone used to decimalisation all this seemed complicated, leaving many foreigners to shake their heads in confusion whenever they bought something in Britain.

Thus, something that cost 4 pounds, eight shillings and fourpence would be written either as £4/8/4d. or £4-8-4d.

It got even more complicated because even pennies were further subdivided. A farthing was a quarter of a penny, a halfpenny (pronounced 'hay-p'ny') was half of a penny. There was also a three farthing coin, worth three-quarters of a penny.

And there were many other coins in use in Britain - there was the two shilling coin, a half crown (worth 2/6d - two shillings and sixpence), a crown (5/-), a half-sovereign (10/-), and a half-guinea (10/6d).

A one pound coin was known as a Sovereign. Coins worth more than a Sovereign were the guinea (£1/1/-) and the £5 coin.

Today, all this seems complicated, but at the time it was all quite simple for Brits (though not for foreigners spending British money).

Tuppence...how much was that.....

Will be interesting to see if this ever goes through... I don't know too many people that hang on to pennies any more.

I hang on to pennies. When I get a big jar full I take them to one of those coin machines at my A&P and get my few dollars into my pocket. Not a grand amount but it's not in the banks pocket.

I use pennies to make up exact change for stuff. I'd say that the percentage of store clerks who understand money and can make change is about 10%. You wouldn't believe the number who are confused...it's usually the older clerks who don't bat an eye, and can work out the change instantly.

My penny collection's price will go up now
YES